Honesty
by Wonko
Summary: Alternate ending to S18E30, "The Coward's Way." Bernie seeks Serena out and insists on saying her piece.


If Bernie Wolfe had had a worse day in her life, she was struggling to think of it.

The death of her father? A natural part of life; painful, but bearable. Blown up by an IED? A fleshwound compared to this. Alex walking away from her? No more than she deserved, really, when you thought about it.

She supposed she deserved all this too. This humiliation. This public exposure of her hypocrisy, her weakness...her cowardice. Serena certainly seemed to think so.

And God, that really was the icing on the cake, wasn't it? Marcus at least had a right to be hurt and angry. But Serena? She felt a little flicker of anger burst somewhere in her gut. All she'd done was not tell her everything. She'd known the woman a few weeks and they'd probably exchanged no more than a few dozen sentences in all that time. Yes, Bernie had liked her, had begun to consider her more a friend than a friendly acquaintance, but did that mean she owed her complete candour? Did that mean she had to bare her soul and tell her things she couldn't even say in the silence of her own mind half the time?

Did it hell.

She found her feet taking her to AAU on autopilot. A nurse directed her to the consultant's office where Serena was apparently finishing up a bit of paperwork before she left for the day. Bernie let herself in without knocking.

Serena looked up from her work and raised one finely sculpted eyebrow. Her face was cold, closed off. "I rather think we've said everything there is to say," she said in a clipped voice.

Bernie took a deep breath. "You might have, but I haven't. I still have something to say to you."

Serena leaned back. "And what on Earth makes you think I'm interested in hearing it?"

Bernie did her best not to flinch. "I'm a lesbian," she blurted out, crossing her arms over her chest in an unconscious gesture of self-protection.

Serena's lips curled in a cruel smirk. "Yes, I think the entire hospital knows that at this point Ms Wolfe," she said.

This time Bernie did flinch. "Yeah," she remarked bitterly. She paused for a few seconds, then soldiered on. "I've never said those words out loud before."

Serena's face remained impassive for a moment, then suddenly softened. "Sit down," she said, gesturing towards the chair across from her. Bernie sank into it gratefully, her arms still wrapped round her middle.

"Thanks," she murmured, glancing up at Serena through her fringe. "I, uhm...I was born in 1966 you know."

"Okay," Serena replied slowly, a light frown creasing her forehead.

"Apparently my dad dropped me when Geoff Hurst scored the last goal of his hat-trick in the World Cup final. A bit overexcited."

Serena snorted. "My dad kicked our TV over, I'm told," she said, then laughed slightly at Bernie's resultant confusion. "Don't let the accent fool you. We moved down here when I was four." Her accent shifted. "Serena McKinnie, born in Glasgow, also in 1966."

Bernie smiled. "Right," she said softly and suddenly remembered having a crush on Miss Lynch, her Scottish maths teacher when she was a teenager. She cleared her throat. "Anyway, the point I was going to make," she continued, "was that I was born before 1967. Before the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, specifically."

Serena's eyes widened in sudden understanding. "Ah."

Bernie nodded. "Ah, indeed. I was born into a world where people like…" She coughed nervously. "Where people like me lived in the shadows as a matter of course. I don't think I even knew that gay people existed until I was nearly an adult, and even when I did it was always framed as something nasty, something dirty. Something that one didn't speak of."

Serena felt a sudden rush of sympathy. "I'm sorry, Bernie, I-" she began, but Bernie cut her off with a raised hand.

"And then I trained as a doctor in the 80s during the height of the AIDS crisis," Bernie continued. "All those poor men dying agonising, pointless deaths, with partners and lovers locked out of hospital rooms because they weren't 'family'." Her eyes were a little wet, but she pushed on. "And many of them died alone because their so-called real families had disowned them. It was very common back then, that sort of thing." She shrugged. "My family would have done it, I think. If they'd ever guessed." She swiped at her eyes with the heels of her palms. "Anyway, I remember this one man. Harry Cameron, he was called. Lovely, lovely guy. Always ready with a joke, even when he was in more pain than I can even imagine. He'd fought in the war and helped to liberate Bergen-Belsen. And he brought home one of the men he rescued from that hellhole. He had a pink triangle tattooed on his arm, after. In solidarity." She took a deep breath. "He was a hero. And the nurse I had working with me, you know…" She trailed off briefly, her eyes narrowing as she shook her head at the memory. "She refused to even touch him." She snorted with sudden anger. "Like he wasn't even human to her."

Serena's face was stricken, her mouth hanging slightly open. "You don't have to go on," she said. She reached out a hand and rested it on Bernie's knee. "If you don't want to."

Bernie shook her head. "I want to," she said adamantly. "I've never said this to anyone before, ever, and now I've started I don't know how to stop."

Serena nodded and squeezed her knee slightly. "Okay," she said. "I'm listening."

Bernie flashed her a grateful half smile and brought her hand down to rest on top of Serena's. "So, I nursed him myself," she continued. "I pulled double shifts, stayed late. But I wasn't there when he died. I'd gone home for a shower and when I came back…" She breathed in a sharp breath and looked up to meet Serena's eyes. "He died alone."

"I'm sorry," Serena breathed, all of her anger and bile over Bernie's perceived lack of forthrightness suddenly seeming incredibly petty and insignificant. "So...Cameron…" She trailed off, leaving the question implied.

"Yes, he's named for Harry," Bernie confirmed. "Marcus doesn't know that's why I wanted the name. It seemed too hard to explain." She ducked her head. "Like a lot of things." Her nostrils flared as she took a deep, settling breath. "And then I joined the army."

Serena was dimly aware that gay people had at one point been banned from serving in the army, though she wasn't sure when that had changed. She was sure it was under a Labour government though, so that put it in the late 90s at the earliest. She nodded in sudden understanding. "And I suppose secrecy was important there too," she said.

"Oh, yes indeed." Bernie laughed humourlessly. "Did you know there was an entire division of SIB devoted entirely to finding and court-martialling lesbians?"

"Really?" Serena's eyes widened in surprise. "Didn't have enough actual crimes to investigate?"

"Ah, but it was a crime," Bernie countered. "Because the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 didn't cover the Armed Forces. Gross misconduct of an unnatural kind. That's what they called it."

Serena floundered. "You didn't...I mean you weren't…"

"Caught?" Bernie supplied. "Of course not. I'd never even so much as kissed a woman until I met Alex. I had no idea, really. No idea at all. It all only makes sense in retrospect. What's that saying, life can only be understood backwards?"

"But it must be lived forwards," Serena finished. "Yes, I...I understand."

"I think you probably don't, but I appreciate the sentiment." Bernie removed her hand from Serena's, seeming to suddenly remember that they were still touching. Serena pulled her hand back from Bernie's knee, her face flushing in embarrassment. "Anyway," Bernie continued. "I had a friend when I first joined up. Anna. She had a girlfriend back in Cardiff, but they were careful. So, so careful. She barely ever spoke about her, never brought her onto the base for visits. But they wrote letters and that's how they got her. I remember SIB came in the middle of the night to our barracks and turned the whole place upside down. We were all turfed out of bed and made to watch as they went through every personal possession. Letters from home, photos, even our underwear drawers. Nothing was sacred to them. And they took Anna away that night."

She stopped talking for a moment as she stood up and began to pace the small office. "I found out later, what the interrogation was like. They grilled her for days. No let up. They read her girlfriend's letters out to her like they were some shameful, dirty secret. They twisted words that were meant to express love into something tawdry. And when she finally broke and confessed, that wasn't enough. They made her describe how she and her girlfriend made love. They made her degrade her most intimate moments with another human being into nothing more than cheap titillation for them. And then she was court-martialled and discharged with a criminal record."

Serena could barely look at her. Bernie was like a coiled spring, full of pain mingled with righteous fury. "I didn't think," she mumbled uselessly. "I had no idea…"

"Why would you?" Bernie shrugged. "You've never had to think about anything like this in your entire life, have you? But I have. And everything in my life so far has told me that being gay means three things: losing your family, losing your dignity, and dying alone." She barked out a humourless laugh. "Well, I've managed number one pretty well, and I think today's debacle is number two. I'm sure I'll make it a hat-trick."

Serena stood quickly, reaching out to place her hands on Bernie's shoulders. "No," she said adamantly. "Don't say that."

"Why not?" Bernie challenged. "I can't even make a friend without messing it up, never mind anything else."

Serena flinched. "I'm sorry," she breathed. "My pride was hurt. I felt...oh, I don't know, like I'd been made a fool of somehow. It doesn't matter now. Really."

Bernie shook her head. "I think it does," she said, her eyes dark and unreadable. "You wanted me to tell the truth. That's what this was all about, wasn't it? To return your candour. To be honest." She gently pushed Serena's hands away and took a step back. "No world I've ever lived in has ever been remotely interested in my truth," she said hotly. "Not my family. Not medicine. Not the army. So I learned to lie. I learned so well I even became an expert at lying to myself. And now the world has moved on. Attitudes have changed, as they say. Straight people have decided that actually, the gays are human after all and should get to live their lives openly. And that's all very nice, for younger people. But I've spent my entire life hiding because that's what the world and people like you wanted from me."

Serena flinched like she'd been slapped and her face coloured with shame. Bernie took another step back. "No-one has ever wanted _my_ truth," she said again. "I've had to swallow it my entire life. And now I'm being punished for dishonesty because the truth sticks in my throat." Her voice was low and bitter. "So I'm sorry, Serena. I'm sorry I couldn't overcome decades of repression and self-recrimination quickly enough for your liking. I'm sorry that honesty doesn't come as easily to me as it once did. I'm sorry, because I think you could have been a friend. But the past is the past. And it's made of me what it's made of me." She paused, her hand on the door handle. "That's all I came to say."

And with that she was gone.

Serena stood in stunned silence for half a minute, her mind racing as she tried to process everything Bernie had said. And then she was on the move, walking out of her office and into the corridor at a faster pace than she'd managed in at least a decade.

"Bernie!" she called as she spied burgundy scrubs and blonde hair a few dozen feet away. The other woman stopped, but didn't look back until Serena arrived behind her, her breathing slightly faster from the exertion and the after-effects of their conversation.

"What is it?" Bernie asked, her eyes on the floor.

Serena smiled brightly. "Well, I actually wanted to ask if we could revisit something you just said. I'd like to turn that hypothetical statement into a definitive one, if I may."

Bernie frowned. "What?"

"You said I 'could have been' a friend. I'd like to amend that to 'are' a friend. If that's the correct grammar."

Bernie blinked once, then twice. "You want to be my friend?" she asked, nonplussed. "Even though I'm a liar and a hypocrite and a coward-"

Serena silenced her by bring a finger suddenly to her lips. Her voice was low and serious and her eyes shone with admiration and respect and something else, something fierce that Bernie couldn't name. "Major Berenice Griselda Wolfe," she said slowly. "You are, without a doubt, the bravest person I've ever met."

Bernie shook her head, ready with a denial but Serena's shining eyes silenced her.

"There is nothing cowardly in you," Serena said. "Nothing. No-one who could live the life you described to me just now and still be standing here, unbroken, undefeated, is anything other than brave and noble and good."

Serena felt Bernie's lip tremble under her finger as she gentled her hand and transformed her touch into a caress. She dusted her knuckles over Bernie's cheek as she pushed her hair back behind her ear, then pulled the other woman's head down to her shoulder as she brought her other arm up to enfold her in an embrace.

Bernie was stiff in her arms for half a minute and then she seemed to collapse, silent sobs wracking her as Serena held on tight, whispering quiet words of comfort into her ear. A few people gave them a second glance as they passed, but Serena simply glared at them, telling them with her eyes alone that if this incident joined the gossip already circulating about Ms Wolfe that she would personally hang, draw and quarter them at dawn.

Bernie slowly calmed down, her breathing evening out. "I'm sorry," she murmured as she pulled back, her eyes red and filled with embarrassment at her emotional display.

Serena shook her head. "It's me who's sorry," she said. "You were in pain and you reached out and I kicked you when you were down. You have nothing to apologise for." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of pocket handkerchiefs, offering one to Bernie.

"Oh, infused with Aloe Vera," Bernie remarked. "Gosh, only the best for Ms Campbell, eh?"

Serena laughed. "Absolutely right," she said. "And that goes for friends as well as handkerchiefs." She nodded, as if something was fully settled in her mind. "Right, now how about that drink?"

Bernie smiled tremulously. "Don't you have to get back to Jason?" she asked.

"Ah...well, in the spirit of honesty I must confess that he actually doesn't eat until 7.30. So I have an hour now where I am free to escort my friend to Albie's and help her climb into a tub of shiraz to drown her sorrows. That is...if she still wants to go."

Bernie's smile widened. "Lay on, McKinnie," she said, in her best imitation of a Scottish accent.

Serena laughed. "Watch it," she cautioned, then linked her arm with Bernie's.


End file.
